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    10 Screenplay Tips

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    Samkush
    Here are the key elements that are often present in excellent, award-winning screenplays: 1. The story has a single, clear motive or problem for the main character that either remains the same or bends rather than being fractured. 2. Heroes have a second, inner problem to solve in addition to the obvious outer problem. 3. Stories set up increasingly fantastic circumstances that the audience is led to believe are realistic. 4. Stories have strong openings that set the time, pace and theme through dialogue on the first few pages.

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    10 Screenplay Tips

    Uploaded by

    Samkush
    35 views2 pages
    Here are the key elements that are often present in excellent, award-winning screenplays: 1. The story has a single, clear motive or problem for the main character that either remains the same or bends rather than being fractured. 2. Heroes have a second, inner problem to solve in addition to the obvious outer problem. 3. Stories set up increasingly fantastic circumstances that the audience is led to believe are realistic. 4. Stories have strong openings that set the time, pace and theme through dialogue on the first few pages.

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    Learning how to write screenplays, Screenplay Writing

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    Here are the key elements that are often present in excellent, award-winning screenplays: 1. The story has a single, clear motive or problem for the main character that either remains the same or bends rather than being fractured. 2. Heroes have a second, inner problem to solve in addition to the obvious outer problem. 3. Stories set up increasingly fantastic circumstances that the audience is led to believe are realistic. 4. Stories have strong openings that set the time, pace and theme through dialogue on the first few pages.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    35 views2 pages

    10 Screenplay Tips

    Uploaded by

    Samkush
    Here are the key elements that are often present in excellent, award-winning screenplays: 1. The story has a single, clear motive or problem for the main character that either remains the same or bends rather than being fractured. 2. Heroes have a second, inner problem to solve in addition to the obvious outer problem. 3. Stories set up increasingly fantastic circumstances that the audience is led to believe are realistic. 4. Stories have strong openings that set the time, pace and theme through dialogue on the first few pages.

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    Screenplay tips

    In the run-up to the awards season, everyone seems to be looking for clues of what makes a movie, or a
    movie screenplay award-worthy.
    There are some strikingly similar elements present in excellent screenplays such as Oscar and/or BIFA
    nominated scripts like The King’s Speech and 2008′s Slumdog Millionaire.
    Here are some of the similarities, highlighted for educational purposes:

    1. Single Motive Line


    The most common mistake a screenwriter can make is to break or fracture the storyline.
    For example, if you have ever told someone you were going to read a specific book title on filmmaking, they
    would expect you to update them daily on what you had learned. They would keep wondering “What is it
    like?” “Is it good?” and so on.
    But if you told them after you had read the first chapter that you had decided to start studying figure skating
    instead, they would scratch their head. You would lose them at this point.
    Tell them however, that you have decided to become a animator instead of filmmaker and they would accept
    this as a career change, because your basic motive has not changed. It has simply bent.

    Producer's Foundation Certificate2. Heroes Have A Second Problem To Solve


    In your bog-standard Hollywood movie, the cliche is of the action hero shot in the chest, the bullet stopped by
    an object in their chest pocket. Usually this is a copy of the Bible, or a picture of the girl they left behind.
    This is the way Hollywood tries to tack on a second problem to solve – in this case an inner problem: religion
    or relationships.
    Make one outer problem obvious and visible. Make the second one an inner problem, one that the main
    character may not even know that he or she has at the start of the story,
    Doing this will make your movie zing.

    3. Suspense of Disbelief
    Great movies set up a series of circumstances that when added together become fantastical or extreme to the
    point where our average daily life becomes pale in consideration.
    Great movies successfully walk us through each stage of these increasingly fantastic constructions and
    make us believe that they are real, when in fact they are far from real.

    Write and Sell the Hot Script4. Strong Openings


    Set the time and pace, and sum up the story through a clear and strong statement of theme.The opening
    page of an action movie might have three or four short scenes, but a romantic comedy might have an opening
    scene lasting several pages.
    Theme is what the story is really about, and is generally expressed through dialogue on the third or fourth
    page. For example, on page 3 of Chinatown, Jack Nicholson says: “You need to be a rich sonabitch to kill
    someone in this town and get away with it.” This perfectly expressed what Chinatown was relly about.
    5. Play With Structure
    Structure is probably the most misleading and unhelpful screenwriting term invented. A story’s structure is
    based on the way your character’s goals unfold.
    Stories may in fact have a single theme as in (1) above, but clever and smart story-telling will throw a curve
    ball and lead the main character onto another goal temporarily. Not every film needs the paint-by-number
    structure ideas proclaimed by leading so-called story gurus.
    6. Ambition
    Great movies are ambitious in their scope and ideas. Great movies try and connect the writer’s idea to the
    member of the audience watching the film, and teach them something they can use for their own life. They
    may not always totally succeed, but an audience will always allow a movie faults if the ambition is there for
    everyone to see.
    7. Choose Your World
    Screenwriters have the choice of two worlds: the one we, the audience, know or the one we dont know. Great
    movies take us into one of these two worlds and either show us something about the world we know (that we
    didn’t know before) or, take us into a world we do not know and show us something that we can use in our
    own lives to become better people.
    8. Genre
    Great movies are based on a blend of genres. All stories are blends of genres. The two most popular and
    commercial successful genre blends today arte action/adventure and romantic/comedy. Genre has always
    been with us, be it in ancient Greek myths, Shakespearean stage plays or in modern straight-to-video movies.
    Study films of the type you would like to write or make and see how past masters of these movies unfold their
    stories.
    9. The World We Live In
    As a storyteller and filmmaker you get to create your own version of the world – a world that is populated by
    movie people doing movie things in movie time. Great movies create worlds that are full of sparkling details
    and characters in which the writer and filmmaker show their own moral view of life, along with a view of how
    details impact and affect the way people live.

    10. Have Something To Say


    A movie with a great message is a great movie. See if your movie or screenplay can relate to a theme that is
    larger or more universal than the story you are telling.

    Fade Out:
    We are entering a whole new era of filmmaking and storytelling. Everyone is making up the rules as we go
    along. You can be part of this new frontier. Remember that quitters never win and winners never quit.
    Now, why are you reading this when you should be out making or writing your next movie?

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